The Power of Appearances: Renaissance and Reformation Portrait Prints

This exhibition explored the popularity and importance of portraits of the famous and infamous. Portraiture in prints, as well as in other media, developed rapidly in sixteenth-century Europe as artists sought to express the new value placed on the individual. Not since antiquity had individuals been so frequently represented, or their images so freely circulated and replicated (especially as prints). The exhibition examined the nature of "likeness" by bringing together depictions of powerful Renaissance personalities, among them Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, cleric and humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Protestant reformer Martin Luther. Other artists whose works were featured included German artists Lucas Cranach the Elder and Hans Burgkmair I; the Dutch printmakers Lucas van Leyden and Hendrik Goltzius; and the Italians Giorgio Ghisi, Agostino Carracci, and Martino Rota.

The exhibition of sixty-two prints was organized by the National Lending Service of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. H. Diane Russell, former curator of old master prints at the National Gallery of Art, curated the exhibition. The exhibition was generously sponsored at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center by The Smart Family Foundation, Inc. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.